My Alfie Collection

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And Alfie is Michael Caine. His is the voice you hear in your head as you read this speedy, funny, sad, piquant swinging London novel. No one else could possibly do. Alfie is 3 or 4, has a 1 year old little sister and they live on a suburban street with their Mum and Dad. The stories feature realistic, everyday scenarios that could happen in the life of any young child. I've read about half of this book, but what I've read so far is very amusing and very chilling. I gather ALFIE was first a play, then a movie and then a novel, but, inasmuch as the play, the screenplay and the novel were each written by Bill Naughton, I think I may say that ALFIE is, in either of its incarnations, the expression of one artist's view of a particular type of man.

Alfie is a classic unreliable narrator as I learned the term – at school when studying another piece of Northern writing originally designed as drama, Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. He says something and then shortly afterwards contradicts, with words or action his own stated opinion of himself – or rather contradicts the way “most people” would interpret what he said, a sort of unconscious hypocrisy. Sometimes he does it in the same sentence: I don't mean thieving or anything like that, just the odd few bob a day [taken from the till at work]. Also, I recommend because all in all it is a very readable book. Quirky, at times funny and entertaining by a long shot.I think I’ll have a whisky", I said. "A Dimple Haig, if you’ve got it." I knew she hadn’t. And to be quite frank I wouldn’t know a Dimple Haig from Long Tom except for the shape of the bottle, but I find I like reeling off a name now and again. Alfie Gives a Hand - Alfie gets invited to a birthday party, where the birthday boy is naughty and Alfie comforts a crying girl.

I’m always prepared to make an adjustment. If I’m having it off with a short bandy-legged bint I keep telling myself how marvellous bow legs are and asking myself why I don’t go in for them more. Same with great big fat birds. Whoever I’m with at the time is my favourite type, if you see what I mean. That’s what we’re here for, to make one another happy. Having thought about it in the last few months, I'm not sure I like the term “unreliable narrator”, especially the way it's often used on Goodreads - a way of dismissing certain types of characters [and by implication real people who resemble them]. Is anyone's self awareness 100%? Must people outwardly demonstrate exhaustive awareness of their contradictions at all times to please those who place themselves in judgement? Does any first-person account really contain full understanding of others' experiences of the same situation? And words and concepts have slightly different meanings to people within their own personal subculture (created out of what they know, whether that's friends and family, what they've read and watched etc). “Thieving” in the idiolect of Alfie and his mates – and his dad and step-mum who've fenced goods for him down the pub – evidently has a particular meaning narrower than it does in the eyes of the law and people who would never pilfer. Alfie is a turtle - one who disappears. This book, which is really two stories, tells the tale of Nia, who got a turtle for her 6th birtday, and Alfie, the turtle, who went exploring and was gone for a full year. Sin embargo la masculinidad de Alfie y su misoginia se antojan aquí como un mecanismos de defensa y evasión, contra la vida, la juventud que se escapa cada día y la maldición esa de despertar solo en cama, o peor aún, con alguien que no te puede importar menos. What is it going to take for this man to finally grow up, to for once value what a woman is? When I finally came to a culminating event in Alfie’s life, I almost started hyperventilating just reading about it and then became sad that this is what it was going to have to take to make Alfie finally grow up. But oddly, Alfie makes a statement that started me on an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Instead of being sad or disgusted at what was going on, I found myself laughing hard at the fact that even after all this Alfie did not grasp the seriousness of what had just happened to him. And then I had to ask myself why I was laughing at something so serious. What is wrong with me? This is a book where I would like to read a sequel to find out what happens to Alfie as he gets older. Does he finally grow up?

A woman told me she once went paralysed down one side of her face forcing herself to laugh at her old man’s jokes what she’d heard two million times. Yes, you make a married woman laugh and you’re halfway there. Course it doesn’t work with a single bird. It’ll set you off on the wrong foot. You get one of them laughing and you don’t get nothing else. Alfie es ese adorable hijo de puta que todos quisiéramos como amigo, o que en algún momento de la vida hemos sido. Un patán consumado en periodos tan ausentes de pertenencias que va encontrando los fragmentos de su hogar bajo las faldas de cada dama que conquista compulsivamente. Esta suerte de abuelo del personaje de Barney Stinson de How I Met Your Mother, tiene unos matices más complejos, dramáticos y efectivos que realmente lo vuelven alguien entrañable. Como una especie de Holly Golightly en versión británica, cínica, rota, triste y masculina. Con una hermosa fijación poética por referirse a las mujeres como "aves".

Words and pictures merge seamlessly in these simply devised books. Shirley Hughes, now 78, wrote and illustrated her first Alfie book in 1981. Twenty years on, Alfie and Annie Rose are still respectively four and one-and-a-half years old but show no sign at all of dating.

Rearing? He means raring. Alfie is not well educated, it must be said. He’s a bit of a barrow boy.)